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The old man bowed his head.
"I have," he said, "a few days, a handful of nights. There is something I wish to try to do in this time. I will try to find one who may take my place."
The Vampire stared at him again, now astonished. "But Vassu, my irreplaceable help-it is no longer possible."
"Yes. If I am swift."
"The world is not as it was," she said, with a grave and dreadful wisdom.
He lifted his head. More gravely, he answered:
"The world is as it has always been, Princess. Only our perceptions of it have grown more acute. Our knowledge less bearable."
She nodded.
"Yes, this must be so. How could the world have changed so terribly? It must be we who have changed."
He trimmed the lamp before he left her.
Outside, the rain dripped steadily from the trees.
The city, in the rain, was not unlike a forest. But the old man, who had been in many forests and many cities, had no special feeling for it. His feelings, his senses, were primed to other things.
Nevertheless, he was conscious of his bizarre and anachronistic effect, like that of a figure in some surrealist painting, walking the streets in clothes of a bygone era, aware he did not blend with his surroundings, nor render them homage of any kind. Yet even when, as sometimes happened, a gang of children or youths jeered and called after him the foul names he was familiar with in twenty languages, he neither cringed nor cared. He had no concern for such things. He had been so many places, seen so many sights; cities which burned or fell in ruin, the young who grew old, as he had, and who died, as now, at last, he too would die. This thought of death soothed him, comforted him, and brought with it a great sadness, a strange jealousy. He did not want to leave her. Of course he did not. The idea of her vulnerability in this harsh world, not new in its cruelty but ancient, though freshly recognised-it horrified him. This was the sadness. And the jealousy… that, because he must try to find another to take his place. And that other would come to be for her, as he had been.
The memories rose and sank in his brain like waking dreams all the time he moved about the streets. As he climbed the steps of museums and underpasses, he remembered other steps in other lands, of marble and fine stone. And looking out from high balconies, the city reduced to a map, he recollected the towers of cathedrals, the star-swept points of mountains. And then at last, as if turning over the pages of a book backwards, he reached the begi
There she stood, between two tall white graves, the chateau grounds behind her, everything silvered in the dusk before the dawn. She wore a ball dress, and a long white cloak. And even then, her hair was dressed in the fashion of a century ago; dark hair, like black flowers.
He had known for a year before that he would serve her. The moment he had heard them talk of her in the town. They were not afraid of her, but in awe. She did not prey upon her own people, as some of her line had done.
When he could get up, he went to her. He had kneeled, and stammered something; he was only sixteen, and she not much older. But she had simply looked at him quietly and said: "I know. You are welcome." The words had been in a language they seldom spoke together now. Yet always, when he recalled that meeting, she said them in that tongue, and with the same gentle inflexion.
All about, in the small café where he had paused to sit and drink coffee, vague shapes came and went. Of no interest to him, no use to her. Throughout the morning, there had been nothing to alert him. He would know. He would know, as he had known it of himself.
He rose, and left the café, and the waking dream walked with him. A lean black car slid by, and he recaptured a carriage carving through white snow-
A step brushed the pavement, perhaps twenty feet behind him. The old man did not hesitate. He stepped on, and into an alleyway that ran between the high buildings. The steps followed him; he could not hear them all, only one in seven, or eight. A little wire of tension began to draw taut within him, but he gave no sign. Water trickled along the brickwork beside him, and the noise of the city was lost.
Abruptly, a hand was on the back of his neck, a capable hand, warm and sure, not harming him yet, almost the touch of a lover.
"That's right, old man. Keep still. I'm not going to hurt you, not if you do what I say."
He stood, the warm and vital hand on his neck, and waited.
"All right," said the voice, which was masculine and young and with some other elusive quality to it. "Now let me have your wallet."
The old man spoke in a faltering tone, very foreign, very fearful. "I have-no wallet."
The hand changed its nature, gripped him, bit.
"Don't lie. I can hurt you. I don't want to, but I can. Give me whatever money you have."
"Yes," he faltered, "yes-yes-"
And slipped from the sure and merciless grip like water, spi
The old man's attacker slammed against the wet grey wall and rolled down it. He lay on the rainy debris of the alley floor, and stared up, too surprised to look surprised.
This had happened many times before. Several had supposed the old man an easy mark, but he had all the steely power of what he was. Even now, even dying, he was terrible in his strength. And yet, though it had happened often, now it was different. The tension had not gone away.
Swiftly, deliberately, the old man studied the young one.
Something struck home instantly. Even sprawled, the adversary was peculiarly graceful, the grace of enormous physical coordination. The touch of the hand, also, impervious and certain-there was strength here, too. And now the eyes. Yes, the eyes were steady, intelligent, and with a curious lambency, an i
"Get up," the old man said. He had waited upon an aristocrat. He had become one himself, and sounded it. "Up. I will not hit you again."
The young man gri
pelts.
"Yes, and you could, couldn't you, granddad."
"My name," said the old man, "is Vasyelu Gorin. I am the father to none, and my nonexistent sons and daughters have no children. And you?"
"My name," said the young man, "is Snake."
The old man nodded. He did not really care about names, either.
"Get up, Snake. You attempted to rob me, because you are poor, having no work and no wish for work. I will buy you food, now."
The young man continued to lie, as if at ease, on the ground.
"Why?"
"Because I want something from you."
"What? You're right. I'll do almost anything, if you pay me enough. So you can tell me."
The old man looked at the young man called Snake, and knew that all he said was a fact. Knew that here was one who had stolen and whored, and stolen again when the slack bodies slept, both male and female, exhausted by the sexual vampirism he had practised on them, drawing their misguided souls out through their pores as later he would draw the notes from purse and pocket. Yes, a vampire. Maybe a murderer, too. Very probably a murderer.
"If you will do anything," said the old man, "I need not tell you beforehand. You will do it anyway."
"Almost anything, is what I said."
"Advise me then," said Vasyelu Gorin, the servant of the Vampire, "what you will not do. I shall then refrain from asking it of you."
The young man laughed. In one fluid movement he came to his feet. When the old man walked on, he followed.
Testing him, the old man took Snake to an expensive restaurant, far up on the white hills of the city, where the glass geography nearly scratched the sky. Ignoring the mud on his dilapidated leather jacket, Snake became a flawless image of decorum, became what is always ultimately respected, one who does not care. The old man, who also did not care, appreciated this act, but knew it was nothing more. Snake had learned how to be a prince. But he was a gigolo with a closet full of skins to put on. Now and then the speckled leopard eyes, searching, wary, would give him away.